Apple released previews of Xcode 8 and macOS Sierra yesterday and some changes need to be made to get Dash up to speed:

New Apple docs and new doc format. Xcode 8 doesn’t come with docsets anymore and that means Dash won’t automatically support the iOS 10, macOS 10.12, watchOS 3 and tvOS 10 docs. I’m working on a version of Dash that supports the new docs and will release an update as soon as possible.

New Xcode 8 extensions. The current Dash Xcode extension doesn’t work in Xcode 8. I’m working on a Xcode 8 extension and will release it as soon as possible.

macOS Sierra. I’ve briefly tested Dash in macOS Sierra and everything seems to be working fine. If you notice any bugs please contact me.

Dash 3 for macOS is the biggest update I’ve ever worked on and I’m happy to announce it’s finally available. It comes with a lot of features that you, the users, have requested and some features which I’ve always wanted to add but never had the time until now.

Dash 3 is a paid upgrade. To upgrade, download Dash 3 and follow the instructions in Preferences > Purchase.

New: Archived Docsets

Dash will now use a lot less disk space by keeping docsets archived. Files will only be unarchived on-the-fly when they’re needed. Docsets take up to 10x less disk space while archived.

This feature has no significant performance impact. Most of the page load time is spent during rendering and the time it takes to load the files either from archives or directly from disk is insignificant.

Reinstall your docsets from Preferences > Downloads to benefit from this feature.

New: Tab Restoration

Dash will now restore all your open tabs between launches, so that you can continue from where you left off.

New: Settings Sync

Dash can now sync your settings across Macs, including installed docsets, search profiles and bookmarks.

New: Open Online Page

The “Open in Browser” feature now lets you choose between opening the local or online page.

New: Annotations

Use Annotations to extend any documentation page by adding comments, examples, warnings or bug reports. Annotations are stored online and can be public or private. You can also set up teams to share annotations with your coworkers or friends.

The Annotations Server is open-source so you can set up your own server if you want, for ultimate privacy.

New: iOS Remotes

Dash can now connect to Dash for iOS and display documentation pages on your iOS device. Keep your iPad or iPhone next to you while coding and use them as a second display just for docs.

Clipboard syncing makes sure that when you copy something in Dash for iOS it gets synced to macOS. iOS Remotes also support integration plugin redirection, so that you can initiate searches from your favorite integration plugin directly to iOS.

For the past few months I’ve been working on bringing Dash to iOS. I’ve finally reached a point where I can share what Dash will and won’t be like on iOS.

If all goes well, a beta of Dash for iOS will be released sometime in November, followed by an App Store release in December, hopefully 2014.

The boring news

It’s going to be an universal app and will support both iPhone and iPad.

It will probably cost around $9.99.

No snippets at all. Only documentation. I might add snippets later on depending on demand.

The good news

Searching will be the same as on macOS. Same instant speed, same results.

Docsets that are downloaded by the app will be kept archived and documentation pages will be unarchived in-memory only when they need to be displayed. This means 4-10x less disk space usage compared to Dash for macOS.

The bad news

There are a lot of limitations when dealing with WebViews in iOS. This means that some docsets might not be as awesome as they are on macOS, but I’ll do my best to fix any issues.

You’ll only be able to install the main 150+ documentation sets and nothing else (i.e. no support for Ruby Gems, CocoaPods and others). However, you’ll be able to transfer docsets from your Mac/PC using iTunes File Sharing.

Screenshots

Note: This is a work in progress. Some things (e.g. icons) will be changed.

At the beginning of 2014 I’ve started looking for other developers to bring Dash to other platforms.

A few days ago, Velocity for Windows was released. Just like Dash on macOS, Velocity gives your PC instant offline access to 150+ API documentation sets, so you can get to the programming docs you need as quickly as possible.

Velocity is made by Jamie da Silva and not by me. I’ve just helped Jamie get access to all of Dash’s docsets. As far as I can tell, Velocity has a bright future ahead and more features are in the works. I really hope it will become at least as popular as Dash is with Mac users.

If you ever have to use Windows for your programming needs, please check out Velocity now, it will help speed up your development process.

The bad news is that Apple changed the look and feel of their docsets and there are a few changes required in Dash to get everything to work. I don’t expect these changes to take a lot of time, but I can’t give an ETA.

I know that some of you would like to use Dash inside Yosemite as soon as possible, so I’m also going to support it in the upcoming update. By support, I just mean fixing any bugs that might have come up (no redesign yet). If you’re using Dash in Yosemite already, please contact me and let me know whether or not you found any bugs.

Search all questions directly from within Dash, just like any other docset

View comments and answers for any question, without any Internet access

Waste around 20GB of disk space

If you’re short on disk space, don’t worry! I’m also working on an online-only version of the docset. This version will let you search Stack Overflow using Dash’s blazing fast search engine, but the content will come from stackoverflow.com instead of your drive.